


Dido's Lament

by Ritequette



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Deal With It, Future Fic, Happy Ending?, Heavy Angst, I spell Viktor with a "k", I'm warning you, M/M, Misunderstandings, Most of the characters are adulting now, Multi, Pretty much all the characters are in this, Probably bittersweet, This is really sad you guys, This takes place roughly four years after the series, because that's how i roll, right in the feels, so many misunderstandings, some of them poorly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-08 23:27:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8867542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ritequette/pseuds/Ritequette
Summary: Three rings later, Viktor answers.And Yakov has to deliver the worst news of his life.“Viktor, Yuri is gone.”___Or, Yuri Plisetsky (unintentionally) entangles himself in a scandal of epic proportions. The fallout is too much to handle.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: I originally named this fic "Yuri and JJ's Not-So-Excellent Adventure," and friends, you will find out why.

Three days.

Yakov does not come to knock on Yuri’s door for three days. Not because he’s being neglectful, or because he is unwilling to help Yuri deal with the _fallout_ , or even because he’s too busy with the other skaters under his tutelage.

No, Yakov does not park in front of Yuri’s apartment, the sidewalk’s edges lined with deep, icy snow, does not walk up the stairs three stories, the railing frigid, no heating in the stairwell, does not trudge down the narrow hall of tiny studio apartments, one of which Yuri started renting only last year, excited for “adulthood,” does not raise his gloved hand and knock on the beige door coated in old, peeling paint…He does not do these things for _three days_ because he got the foolish idea in his head that all Yuri Plisetsky needed was _time._

Time to grow a hard heart and learn to ignore the cruel press once and for all. Time to throw his fits in the privacy of his own home, without embarrassing himself in the face of his peers. Time to process his humiliation. And perhaps, if the sordid stories swirling across the internet were indeed as true as they seemed from the pictures…time to consider his _mistakes_ and how to recover from them in the future, personally and professionally.

Someone told Yakov long ago that all pain softens with time—and he thinks it may have been Lilia, the day she slid the divorce papers across the breakfast table without warning. Cold as that day was, inside and out…she had been right. That pained softened. It still ached from time to time, but no more than his back twinged in the mornings.

And so, with that wisdom lodged in his heart—three days he’d waited.

But Yuri Plisetsky had not reappeared. The boy who had not skipped a practice in all the years Yakov had known him had not shown up to skate three days in a row. Even Lilia herself was getting worried now. Mila was practically distraught. Georgi kept flubbing his jumps, riddled with dread. The other skaters had completely lost their focus. And Viktor Nikiforov, the living legend, now retired in Japan, had texted Yakov thirty-seven times, called him eight times, and emailed him twice.

Three days was apparently _far_ too much time to give Yuri Plisetsky—even if the boy truly needed it. His circle of influence—Yuri would never let Yakov say “friends”—had simply grown too large for it to be ignored in the face of this…

 _Should I call it a scandal?_ he wonders, his knuckles half an inch from Yuri’s door. The press certainly painted it as a scandal, but Yakov preferred to reserve such judgments until he had the full story. And Yuri had not yet told that story. Not to Viktor. Not to Mila. Not to anyone. He hadn’t contacted a single person since the day he returned St. Petersburg in the wake of that disastrous Grand Prix Final.

Now that Yakov is thinking on it, all alone in this dreary hallway, cramped and silent—perhaps _that_ should have been the first sign that things were worse than they appeared at face value.

Because when had Yuri Plisetsky _ever_ been silent about his problems?

Yakov takes a deep breath.

He knocks.

There is no answer.

He knocks harder.

There is no answer.

He knocks as hard as he can without hurting himself.

There is no answer.

“Yuri!” Yakov calls through the door, listening intently. For the telltale rustling of fabric. Faint footsteps on the carpet. Yuri’s cat meowing at the sign of a visitor. Something. Anything to indicate that Yuri is simply hiding out, too ashamed to show himself to his coach.

But Yakov hears absolutely nothing.

Fear flutters through his heart for the first time since the “scandal” broke on the news. He’d known Yuri would be upset. Anyone would be _dismayed_ under these circumstances. But now, in this absolute silence, with no signs of life whatsoever, in the middle of the day, in an apartment that Yuri has _not_ been seen leaving by the harping press on the street corner, not once…Yakov considers (the fear beats harder) that this sudden, unanticipated obstacle thrown in Yuri’s path may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The boy has had so much on his shoulders for so long. Viktor’s successor, they call him, the next legend, the next _god,_ the boy to beat, who’s been edging out his stiff competition for four years by minimal margins, sometimes less than a point, because as hard as Yuri has worked—others have been working just as hard.

Yakov first noticed the strain last year. Yuri sleeping longer hours. Extricating himself from social functions before it was appropriate. Virtually hiding from the press at times, even though he _loved_ (still loves?) basking in his victories.

Not for the first time, Yakov wonders whether Viktor’s legacy, rippling behind Yuri like a cloak…is more a curse than a blessing. Something to shun rather than embrace.

Not for the first time, Yakov wonders whether he has a made a vital mistake in Yuri’s training, whether setting Yuri up to follow and ultimately surpass Viktor put Yuri on an unstable foundation doomed to eventually collapse.

 _Did it crumble in a mere three days,_ Yakov worries, _break beneath his feet while I wasn’t looking_?

If so, Yakov is not sure he can forgive himself.

 _Please, Yuri,_ Yakov pleads to the silence on the other side of the door, _don’t tell me you’ve done something rash, don’t tell me you’ve hurt yourself over something that won’t matter in a year, don’t tell me you’ve thrown all your hard work away for one misstep, don’t…_

“Excuse me, sir?” says a voice to Yakov’s right. “Do you need something?”

Yakov jumps at the sudden words and glances over his shoulder. A young lady in a thick winter coat is closing the door to her apartment. Movement catches Yakov’s eye, and he looks at the floor of the foyer, quickly disappearing as the door swings shut. But Yakov sees _it_ , just before the door pulls to, a familiar tan and black cat darting across the floor. Yuri’s cat.

“I…” Yakov stammers, confused. “I’m sorry, but is that _your_ cat?”

The lady tilts her head, unsure if Yakov is a person to trust with personal information. She looks him over for a moment, then shrugs. “No,” she replies. “Not mine. I’m caring for her while the owner is out of town.”

The truth drops on Yakov’s shoulders like a lead weight. “Yuri is…not here?” His gaze drifts back to the closed door he’d pounded on so frantically. Silence still sits beyond it.

The young woman shakes her head. “No, I’m sorry. My neighbor left two days ago. Asked if I could care for his cat in the meantime. Paid me good money for it too.” She smiles. “I do not like cats much, but the poor boy seemed distraught. I thought maybe he was having a family emergency or something. So I agreed. And the cat is not so bad, actually. A real sweetheart.” She nods at Yakov. “You are a…friend of my neighbor?”

“Coach,” Yakov answers automatically, his tone flat.

He had missed Yuri by two whole days. Damn _time._ Damn it all.

“Oh, he plays a sport?” the lady asks.

“Yes, and he’s quite good.” Yakov’s shaking hand sinks into his coat pocket, where his phone is vibrating again, another message incoming. And Yakov knows who it’s from. It can’t be anyone else—because Yakov told _everyone_ else not to even think about contacting him until he returned to the rink.

Viktor. Four thousand miles away, ignorant and helpless.

“Huh.” The woman locks her door and drops her keys into her purse. “Well, that’s interesting. I had no idea I lived across from a professional athlete.” She chuckles, but it’s a weak sound. She can sense Yakov’s distress.

Yakov would normally try to assuage nervousness—he’s grown quite good at that over his years of being a coach—but right now, he cannot bring himself to care.

“Miss, did Yuri, by any chance, mention _where_ he was going?”

The woman thinks about it for a second, biting her lip, seeming to realize that something _very_ serious is going on here. At last, she sighs. “I’m sorry, sir, but he did not. He only said he was leaving town for a while.”

For a while. An indeterminate period of time. A day. A month. A year. For the rest of Yakov’s lifetime.

_Yuri, what have you done?_

“Thank you, miss. That’s all I needed to know.”

Before the woman can get another word out, Yakov brushes past her and barrels into the chilly stairwell, moving faster than his stiff, aging legs have taken him in a long, long time. When he reaches the lobby, he storms across the wet tile floor, pushes through the frosty glass doors, and, the moment the frigid air hits his face, _breathes_ in for the time in almost two minutes.

He stumbles into the brick wall next to the door and stares idly at the icy sidewalk, mind in shambles.

Yakov has never had an anxiety attack in his life. And up until this moment, he has never truly understood why Yuuri Katsuki struggled so, so much in competition.

Yakov will _never_ belittle that man again.

With one last gulp of cold air to steel himself, Yakov tugs his phone from his pocket, ignores the latest text message from the legend he taught for so many years, and clicks straight through to his phone number. He hesitates for only a moment—a long moment, too long a moment—before he hits the dial button.

Three rings later, Viktor answers.

And Yakov has to deliver the worst news of his life.

“Viktor, Yuri is gone.”


	2. Before the Fall

**ONE WEEK EARLIER**

 

Lilia would murder him, Yuri thinks, if she saw him stuffing his mouth like this. But thankfully, Yuri is no longer a child—he’s _nineteen_ now—and so he was allowed without too much needling to tour Vancouver for the day on his own. By himself. With no chaperone whatsoever. (Amazing what difference a year and a half makes, he muses from time to time.)

And so, his trip to the Granville Island Public Market, and his perusal of _all_ the foods it has to offer, went undetected by the ballet instructor who has fiercely regimented his diet these past few years. His wallet, too, is unguarded for once, in his own pocket instead of Yakov’s. (He’d had control of that _before_ , to be honest, but Yakov had restricted him after that…impromptu trip to Japan.)

Yuri leans against the icy wall of one of the market buildings and looks out at the churning water twenty feet away. Several large boats are chugging through False Creek, heading out west to the English Bay, quickly, like they have somewhere to be by nightfall. According to the weather app on Yuri’s phone, there may be a snowstorm tonight. Maybe the crews have to dock somewhere before the snow blows in. 

He reaches into one of his many bags and digs out another warm pastry, biting into it as he juggles his phone in the opposite hand, camera on. It’s not the first time he’s been to Vancouver, but it _is_ the first time he’s thought to take an ample number of pictures. Not because he particularly cares to record his hours prowling around the city, stuffing his face and gawking at the sights, but because _Beka_ —Otabek—likes frequent updates on his trips to competitions, when they are not together. 

Beka had not made this year’s Grand Prix Final.

Because he wasn’t good enough? _No._

Because he’d wrecked his ankle earlier in the season, during the Rostelecom Cup. One of the worst-looking accidents during the Grand Prix series in years.

Yuri had been there, had _seen_ the medics haul Beka off the ice, and there are still videos on YouTube circulating, of Yuri in his bright red costume, with tears of terror running down his face, as he sat in the Kiss  & Cry, unable to do anything to help the man he’d grown so close to over the past four years.

(The speculation had been rife. _Were they dating?_ the press kept asking.)

(The speculation had also been _right._ Not that Yuri, or Otabek, for that matter, would ever confirm anything to the nosy media. They’re content being low-key, private—unlike _another_ couple Yuri knows.)

Beka is recovering now. He’ll skate again—but not this season. He’d been freed from his cast two weeks ago and now has several weeks of therapy ahead of him. Next year, maybe, they’ll compete again, stand on the podium together again, visit bits and pieces of the world hand in hand again. 

A year is a long time to wait though. If possible, he’ll visit Beka after the Grand Prix Final. He hasn’t seen the man in person for too long now. Skype can only take them so far, and he’s starting to forget…

Yuri shakes the negativity away and tosses the last bit of pasty into his mouth. It won’t do him any good to get worked up about Beka now. Far away in Kazakhstan, he’s waiting to watch _Yuri’s_ performances at the Final, starting with the Short Program the day after tomorrow. And Yuri intends to deliver the best damn performance he’s _ever_ given.

This year, Yuri won’t fall short, like he has the last two years.

After his phenomenal Grand Prix Final win in 2017, several other gold medals already decorating his shelves, Yuri had stumbled in the subsequent seasons. Christophe Giacometti’s last season in 2018 had been hard-going—that Swiss bastard hadn’t given an inch, and he’d beaten Yuri at the Final by a point. A single point.

(Though, really, Yuri wasn’t _so_ angry at him. He’d worked hard for many years, only to play second fiddle to Viktor for most of them. So, Yuri begrudgingly admitted, maybe the man deserved to sweep the gold medals during his last hurrah. Maybe.)

But, really, 2019 had been the _real_ disappointment. After taking a season off for a never-specified reason, the _great and powerful_ “King” JJ had come prancing back into the skating circle.

Yuri had been _so_ disappointed to find out he was alive, after he’d dropped off the map for nearly a year. A dead JJ, he could deal with. Gone but not forgotten. _So_ sad.

A living JJ was a pain in the ass, even if the man spent most of his time on the other side of the world. 

A living JJ that openly challenged Yuri to a virtual skating duel for a season’s worth of competitions? Oh, that was just spectacular.

And the way it had _ended_. With JJ snatching half the gold medals right out of his hand, by less than a point most of the time, at the Grand Prix Final, at Worlds…it had been one embarrassment after another. So many stupid tabloid articles about Yuri’s _fall from grace_. (Bullshit, all of it.) So many people questioning whether Yuri could _really_ surpass the legendary Viktor Nikiforov—despite the fact he’d broken Viktor’s records twice over. (Even _more_ bullshit. Ugh.)

Yuri could do with a year’s worth of amnesia. He really could. If only to forget that time JJ _winked_ at him while they were on the podium, the “King” one step above him, and Yuri had been so pissed off, he’d made a misstep and fallen flat on his ass on the ice.

Damn Jean-Jacques Leroy. Yuri would—

A ship’s horn echoes through the twilight, pulling Yuri from his thoughts. Night is closing in, the air growing colder—it’s getting late. He has a day to go before the Short Program, and Yakov and Lilia will want him to start preparing early tomorrow morning.

Yuri crumples the papery wrapper for his pastry, only crumbs remaining, and finally pushes away from the wall, trudging over to a nearby trashcan and tossing the “leftovers.” After shifting the bags up high on his arms, he opens the recent call list on his phone and taps the number for the cab company he’s been using to get around all day. They pick up on the second ring, he gives them his location, and the man on the other end promises a cab will be there to pick Yuri up in five minutes.

Yuri ends the call and glances out across False Creek one last time, the dark water reflecting the bright orange lights of the towering buildings on the opposite shore.

He closes his eyes and pictures his Short Program. Every step. Every jump. Every spin. He hears the phantom of his music haunting the space between his ears. _I can do this,_ he assures himself, as the first snowflakes drift from the sky and tease his reddened cheeks. _I can win this. I can beat JJ. I can beat them all._

He could have beaten Viktor, too, if he’d had the chance.

Yuri’s eyes snap open, and he glares across the water, at the city that has challenged him, at the people who have _no idea_ , none at all, what force of nature they’ll witness in the rink mere days from now.

Yuri turns and walks back to the road, where the cab dropped him off earlier.

This is Yuri’s year to win. Every gold. Every title.

This is also Yuri’s year to lose.


	3. Short Program 2020

Yuri is first—and nearly flawless. 

He takes the ice with determination, and when he reaches the center of the rink, a hush falls over the crowd. In the brief moment before the music begins, he scans the crowd with a sharp eye, noting who’s there. And who’s _not_.

Familiar faces wish him good luck with reserved smiles. Mila and Georgi. Sara and Michele. Some who have retired now and moved off the rink for good. Others who will be his competition next season.

Viktor and Yuuri Katsuki are the notable absences. They had planned on coming—despite his “insistence” they not, because they annoy the hell out of him every year—but a sudden health scare involving Yuuri’s father derailed their plans. Yuri is… _mad_ is not the word. Disappointed, maybe, that Viktor won’t get to see him perform live.

Yuri has spent months refining the initial choreography Viktor created for this program. He wanted the living legend to witness, up close, just how much he’s developing, getting better, faster, even in the short weeks between competitions.

He wants to inspire something in Viktor the same way Viktor inspired him when he was younger.

Nostalgia, maybe? Yuri is not _quite_ sure what he wants to stoke in Viktor’s heart.

Alas, whatever it is, it’ll have to wait until a later competition this season.

For now, Yuri will perform his best—perfection—without Viktor’s sentimental eye cast on him.

Yuri breathes in, deep, lifts his arms in a formation that has become second nature, and—the music begins. The first notes are long, melancholy, and his movements reflect the tone of loss and mourning. He glides atop the ice, wrapped in the notes that dance through the air, each chord struck on the piano reflecting in his spins, his steps—his jumps. 

Yuri nails the first triple axel, and the music changes. The mourning fades away, and the desire for vengeance grows. A flicker in the music’s heart at first, low notes of warning. Before it suddenly explodes, tempo increasing, Yuri’s skating growing faster along with it.

Another jump, his first quad. Perfect. A combo. Perfect. A step sequence so wild yet simultaneously controlled he was surprised the first time he did that it didn’t break him down to dust. _Perfect._

The finale—Viktor’s signature—the Quad Flip.

He comes into the jump fast, chest burning, heart pounding, legs and arms trying their hardest to shake themselves out of formation (but he won’t allow it).

Yuri jumps. Spins. Once. Twice. Three times… _Four!_

He lands with a _nearly_ imperceptible wobble, and flies out of the jump triumphant, finishing his program with a combination spin and coming to a sudden stop, one hand pointed at the audience—like a challenge. The throwing of the gauntlet.

The music draws to an exciting, abrupt close, and the stadium falls silent. For two seconds, five, eight.

And then the crowd is up. Cheering. For him.

 _I did it,_ he thinks as he drops his pose. _Strong right out the gate, as planned._

Yuri skates toward the Kiss & Cry, where Yakov and Lilia are already waiting for him, both wearing proud, pleased expressions. He doesn’t know what his exact score will be, but it’ll be high enough to take some of the pressure off his much more difficult Free Program tomorrow. The one he’s been struggling to perfect all season. The one he _will_ perfect, before Worlds, if he has to sell his soul to do it.

As he’s putting his skate guards on, Yakov’s hand lands on his shoulder, squeezing gently. “Excellent, Yuri. I think you’ve crossed 110 points yet again.”

Lilia, standing a few feet behind him, nods. “Definitely. The judges would be fools to score you less than 115, in my opinion.”

Yuri doesn’t know about _that_ —his 118 in the 2016 Final had been almost impossible to achieve a second time. As soon as you bump the bar, the judges move it higher.

Regardless, he steps off the ice, a spark of pride running through his own veins. He can imagine Viktor’s sappy smile when he watches the recording later, along with Pork Cutlet’s inevitable shriek of disbelief. He glances at his fellow skaters, sitting together in the crowd, and Mila winks at him, while Georgi nods in a _fatherly_ way that is…more than a little unsettling. He wonders, idly, if Grandpa will have a chance to watch—

“Nice to see I’ll have _some_ competition this year, at least.”

Yuri pulls himself out of his thoughts, still standing on the very edge of the rink, Yakov and Lilia waiting to escort him to the bench for the Kiss & Cry. And who does he find, standing five feet away, shrugging off his red and white jacket as he prepares to skate his own Short Program?

 _King_ JJ. Who else?

It’s been a while since Yuri’s seen him—they didn’t hit the same competitions in the Grand Prix series this year—but he looks just as smarmy and self-absorbed as Yuri remembers. The too-wide smile. The hairstyle with a _tad_ too much gel holding it in place. Another ostentatious costume in another hideous color— _turquoise_ this year, can you believe it? And if Yuri had to wager—Short Program music he wrote himself and recorded with his “band.”

Yuri brushes past the man on his way to the Kiss & Cry, ignoring JJ’s comment. They’ve been neck and neck every season they’ve competed together, and JJ damn well knows that. And, hell, Yuri isn’t the one who took a whole season off to fuck around doing who-knows-what. So JJ has no right whatsoever to taunt him now, any more than he did to throw stupid insults during their first season together, four years ago.

So if he still wants to play this stupid teasing game—then Yuri’s not going to bite.

Because he’s better than that. He’s more _mature_ that.

(Oh, and if he _does_ bite, Lilia will wring his neck. Which would be a pain in the ass, because Yuri needs to be _alive_ to figure skate.)

Yuri doesn’t even turn his head to meet JJ’s eyes. Nope. Doesn’t give that Canadian bastard the time of day.

He feels JJ’s eyes follow him as he sits down at the Kiss & Cry, drilling a hole into the back of his head, but he doesn’t falter. Eventually, JJ snorts and gives up (for now), and Yuri hears the telltale scratch of skates meeting ice as JJ takes the rink. 

Before JJ’s music has the chance to lure Yuri into watching the asshole skate, the Kiss & Cry is flooded with the usual reporters, asking him all the usual questions, and Yuri is happy to pay attention to them for once, if only so he can totally ignore the “king” prancing around on the ice to another arrogant anthem.

***

When all is said and done at the end of the day, it’s _Yuri_ who comes out ahead, edging out JJ by _three_ points for the Short Program. One of the widest margins they’ve had between them in a long, long time. And _that_ , really, is all Yuri needs to bolster his confidence for tomorrow’s Free Program.

 _I’ve come to win,_ he thinks to himself, as he’s leaving the rink, a little sore, a little aching, but more than satisfied enough to make up for it. _I’ve come to win, and I’m going to win._

He lets that confidence carry him back to the hotel—and plans to let it carry him to gold.

Sadly, it’s the best laid plans that always go awry.


	4. One Night Out

Yuri wakes at midnight.

He doesn’t know why. Maybe a dream startles him, or maybe a loud truck on the road outside, or perhaps even some hard partier laughing in the hall as they return from a too-late night out. Whatever it is, he sits up in bed, legs a bit stiff from the exertion of his Short Program, a thin film of sweat on his chest—it’s too hot in the room, and the thermostat seems to be broken.

He peels the sheets off himself and swings his legs over the edge of the bed, checking the time on the clock on the nightstand as he does. Yuri prefers a good night’s sleep before a performance, but sometimes, in these foreign places, uninterrupted sleep is hard to come by. So he has a ritual he follows whenever he wakes abruptly. A small snack, a cup of hot tea, and half an hour watching reruns of his favorite shows.

Mundane, yes, but it usually lulls him back into that state of mind where he can sleep soundly. 

Tonight, however, after scouring his bags for five minutes, he realizes that Lilia must have found his stash of no-so-healthy snacks and either taken them for safekeeping or thrown them away. She had immediately confiscated his food from the market, after all—maybe she got suspicious that he was hoarding more and searched his room. _Damn it, can’t she leave well enough alone?_

Diets are important for athletes, sure, but even the best indulge on occasion. Hell, Viktor used to indulge a lot, and Yakov never hounded him for it. Why is Yuri any different? Isn’t he Viktor’s much-touted successor?

Frustrated and much more awake than he should be the night before a very difficult Free Program performance, Yuri throws on some rumpled casual clothes—they might be the same ones he wore the other day, on his sightseeing tour—stuffs his feet into his tennis shoes, grabs his coat off the rack, and heads out the door. There’s a convenience store on the ground level of the hotel, where he should be able to grab a few goodies to snack on.

Or not. 

When the elevator dings and lets him out into the lobby, he spies a big CLOSED sign in front of the store’s entrance. They have late hours, but he missed closing time by thirty minutes. So if he wants a fix for his cravings, he’ll have to look elsewhere.

Standing in the doorway of the elevator, between the lobby and the box that’ll take him upstairs, where he’s supposed to stay put until Lilia and Yakov drag him out of bed tomorrow morning, Yuri bites his lip and considers what to do.

If he goes back upstairs now, he might not get back to sleep at all. And lying in bed, awake, staring at the ceiling for hours on end, won’t help him with his Free Program.

On the other hand, if he leaves the hotel and goes out the night before a crucial performance, and Yakov and Lilia find out—they’ll eviscerate him. Even so, if a ten-minute walk to a nearby 24-hour store, and a good, indulgent snack can send back into that sleepy state he needs to rest, then maybe the verbal beat-down won’t be so bad. After all, if Yuri wins gold tomorrow, will Yakov and Lilia really be able to complain?

He snorts— _I’m thinking about this too much_ —and steps out of the elevator.

Really, what’s one night out?

If he plays this even _half_ intelligently, no one will ever know he left the building.

Yuri nods to the overnight doorman, who pulls open the fancy glass door as he passes by. Yuri slings on his coat as he steps out into the snowy night, zipping it up for extra protection when a gust of wind blows hard around the tall buildings. The snow isn’t too deep yet, but it’s coming down pretty hard, and by morning, he imagines there’ll be drifts everywhere, and huge, icy piles on the sidewalks, churned up by the plows.

He thinks back to his return trip from the market the other day, trying to remember all the stores he noticed. There was at least _one_ convenience store, he remembers, with all-day hours posted. Five blocks away—not as close as he would like, but he can manage it in good time.

Yuri makes his way to the store as fast as he _carefully_ can, stepping cautiously over icy spots on the concrete. His hands and face as freezing by the time he turns the corner and spies the ( _open_ , yes!) store half a block away. Shrugging off the cold, he picks up his pace and reaches the store just as another gust of frigid wind whips through the streets, slinging slow so hard it stings Yuri’s exposed cheeks.

The door jingles as he opens it, and he steps into the warmth.

It’s a small store, with a single, older man at the register, looking bored as he flips through a sports magazine. The man glances up at him, eying his inadequate clothing for the weather outside, then drops his attention back to latest gossip about…hockey, it looks like. _Big surprise there,_ Yuri thinks.

He shakes the snow off his clothes and goes in search of anything good to eat. Blessedly, the store has self-serve coffee and tea in the back corner. Yuri picks a flavor he likes, fills an extra-large cup with hot water, and puts two tea bags in the cup to steep. Next, he quickly peruses the snack aisles and grabs some candy, chips, and, yes, a banana. _See, Lilia? It’s not all unhealthy._

As he approaches the register, he spies the man with the magazine suspiciously side-eying him. He realizes the guy probably thinks he’s some delinquent kid, sneaking out at night. Yuri almost yells at him, almost corrects him, but it’s a pointless argument to get into.

Yuri has grown over the past few years, shot up like a beanstalk, really—he’s taller than Beka now—but his face hasn’t lost its adolescent roundness, and while he’s a _bit_ broader than he was at sixteen, he’s no heavyweight. It’ll be a few more years, his mid-twenties probably, before people actually mark him an adult on sight.

Which is annoying as _hell_.

But, hey, at least he doesn’t look _old_ for his age. ( _Someone_ he knows is already starting to lose his hair.) 

Yuri takes his things to the check-out and tugs his wallet from his back pocket, then slides his debit card across the countertop. The man with the magazine raises an impressed eyebrow, like he was expecting Yuri to try and bolt without paying. Shrugging, he runs Yuri’s card and packs his purchases, minus the tea, into a little bag.

The whole exchange is silent, and Yuri doesn’t try to change that. He grabs his things, pockets his wallet again, snags his tea, and heads back outside.

With the tea to keep him warm, his trip back to the hotel doesn’t feel as brutal as his walk to the store. He takes it slow, enjoying the bright lights of Vancouver’s tall buildings as they reflect off the glittering snowfall. It reminds him, he thinks with a pang, of growing up in Russia. The nights he used to spend with Grandpa at the window, admiring the snow. The mornings after, when they’d have snowball fights for hours, only to return to the house and spend the afternoons making pirozhki.

Yuri wonders if he’ll ever have another day like that.

Grandpa is getting so…frail.

Yuri growls under his breath and takes a big gulp of tea to pull his mind out of free fall. He has the performance of his life to skate tomorrow, and he can’t be chained down by sad thoughts and homesickness. No, he’s going to skate onto that rink tomorrow, blow the competition away, and take home the gold. And when he does get back to Russia, he’ll celebrate his victory _again_ , with Grandpa and all the pirozhki they can make between the two of them. 

Yep. That’s exactly how it’s going to go down. No doubt about— 

“Hey!” says a voice to his left. “Yuri Plisetsky?”

Yuri nearly trips over his own two feet. He steadies himself with the help of a streetlamp and swivels around to see who spooked him, only to find the last person he _ever_ wanted to see standing a few feet away on the sidewalk, heading the opposite direction.

Jean-Jacques Leroy.

JJ, huddled in a thick red and white coat with CANADA emblazoned on the back, stares out at Yuri from under the hood, his unkempt hair falling into his eyes. He blinks at Yuri in surprise, and Yuri blinks back, because, _hell_ , what are the odds the two of them would both be up this late, walking down the same random street in Vancouver the night before the Grand Prix Final Free Program?

Yuri can’t believe fate hates him _this_ much.

JJ can’t believe something too—judging by his frown—but Yuri isn’t sure what exactly he’s thinking.

The older man bites the inside of his cheek, like he’s unsure of what to say, and Yuri adjusts his snack bag on his arm, until he can place his hand on his hip. “If you’ve got something to say to me, Leroy, spit it out and get it over with. I’ve got to skate in the morning, if you remember, and I’d prefer to do it with at least a few hours of sleep.” 

JJ wipes the uncertainty off his face and replaces it with that arrogant mask he usually wears. “If that’s the case, Plisetsky, then why are you out in the first place?” 

Yuri rolls his eyes and showcases his purchases, waving his tea in JJ’s face. “Snack run, dumbass. Can’t beat you into the ground tomorrow on an empty stomach either.”

JJ tugs on his hood and chuckles. “Oh, please. The least you could do is come up with a better excuse than that. I’m not _that_ stupid, Yuri.”

Yuri sneers. “Did I say you could call me by my first name, Leroy?” 

“Oh?” Mischief flickers through his eyes. “Would you prefer I call you _kitten_? I mean, you are pretty—”

Yuri lashes out. He isn’t sure what he _means_ to do, but judging by his history of bickering with JJ, a threatening finger, or a vicious scowl, almost a snarl, close enough to the other man’s face to startle him is _probably_ supposed to be the outcome of his move. And yet, that isn’t what happens.

Somehow, after living in Russia, the land of snow and sorrow, for his entire life, Yuri Plisetsky manages to slip on ice, lose his footing, and crash head first into Jean-Jacques Leroy’s chest. So hard and fast that JJ then loses _his_ footing, and they both fly back into a narrow alleyway lined with dumpsters and dirty snow.

Yuri actually flips three-sixty, bouncing off JJ’s chest and rolling over onto his ass, his snack bag soaring off into the snow, his tea hitting the ground and spilling everywhere. JJ, meanwhile, gets the short end of the stick, and smacks head first into the side of a dumpster with a resounding clang.

For a moment, the city around Yuri goes deathly silent. As he sits there, hunched over and hurting, his arms and shoulders aching, bruised, from their impact with the concrete. As he hangs his head, lips flapping soundlessly, eyes flicking to JJ, who hasn’t moved yet, _isn’t_ moving. As he tries to figure out how he could have fucked up something so basic. He’s a figure skater, for god’s sake. How did he slip on the _ice_?

Yuri holds his breath, staring in horror at his rival. _Please get up. Please get up. Please get up—_

JJ sputters and wriggles out of his contorted position against the dumpster, spitting out snow as he rises. He coughs a couple of times, and one hand goes to the back of his head, checking for a cut. But his fingers, thankfully, come away blood free.

The world starts turning again, and Yuri staggers up himself, eying his ruined snacks in dismay.

“Fuck, Plisetsky,” JJ murmurs, rubbing the back of his head. “It was just a joke. You didn’t have to tackle me.”

Yuri swallows, _It wasn’t funny, you ass!_ and says instead, “I…I didn’t mean to, okay? It was an accident. Are you going..? I mean, are you planning to..?”

Shit. The _trouble_ JJ could get him into for this.

JJ stares at him, perplexed. “Am I going to what?”

Yuri doesn’t answer. 

Understanding washes over JJ’s face. “What, like, file _charges_ or something?” He shakes his head. “No way. Of course not. I mean…” He grimaces as he touches his head again. “I’m pissed at you, Plisetsky. That _really_ fucking hurt. But I’m not going to get you arrested.” He tries to flash his standard JJ smile, but it’s distorted by discomfort. “If I did that, I wouldn’t be able to whip your ass during the Free Program tomorrow.” 

Yuri sucks in a breath—his first in almost a minute—and exhales white. JJ is giving him an out. Which, he begrudgingly admits, makes JJ a _slightly_ better person than he thought. _He’s still an arrogant bastard though. Nothing can change that._  

“Right.” Yuri fidgets uncomfortably. “Um…” He coughs. “Thanks.”

JJ recoils, like he can’t believe Yuri managed to say something nice. “Oh. Well, sure.” A shrug. “No big deal. I get it—you just tripped. Snow and all. I’ve had worse.”

“Oh?” Yuri raises an eyebrow despite himself. He’s not interested in JJ’s life. He _isn’t._  

JJ takes that little _Oh?_ as an invitation though. His face lights up, like he thinks he’s broken through Yuri’s barrier, and the arrogance spreads from his grin to his entire posture. “Oh, yeah. You should have seen me when I was a kid—a cute kid. Even cuter than you, _kitten_.” He winks. He fucking _winks_.

Yuri groans loud enough to wake the dead.

But JJ keeps talking. “See, when I was like, seven or so, I was learning to do my first jumps. And I slipped during my attempt to…”

Yuri, whose attention is now on the snowy sky, eyes rolled as high as they can go, perks up when JJ trails off. “Yes,” he mutters, “that’s right, Leroy. I’m not interested in your stupid story about—”

JJ’s hand lands on his shoulder.

Yuri’s knee-jerk reaction is to swat it off, but then he notices—JJ’s hand is _shaking_.

Yuri drags his attention from the sky, to JJ’s face. Said face is slowly falling into…fear?

And that fear is not directed at Yuri.

Yuri follows JJ’s line of sight, behind him, to the opening of the alley they’d stumbled past not five minutes ago.

Two men stand at the lip of the alley now. Both of them are armed with knives.

One of them says, “Well, well. What do we have here?”

The other says, “A couple stuffed wallets, I hope.” And then he smirks, slowly raising his knife to point at Yuri’s face.

That is the moment Yuri realizes his _one night out_ will be much, much longer than he intended.


	5. One Long Night

If you’d asked Yuri Plisetsky a week ago what he was planning to do the night before his Grand Prix Final Free Program, the answer would not have been _Get mugged in Vancouver_. 

But because life likes to spit in Yuri’s face—he’s getting mugged in Vancouver.

The man on the left, the taller and tougher-looking of the two, strides up to Yuri and JJ, and holds out his free hand, gesturing. “Phones first,” he demands. “Then we’ll take a look at the wallets.”

Yuri opens his mouth to say something, but words don’t come out. And JJ stands next to him equally silent, rigid, his fingers now clenching Yuri’s shoulder too hard for comfort. Yuri doesn’t know what the other skater is thinking, but he’s getting the distinct impression that JJ’s childhood in Canada didn’t involve being held at knifepoint at any point in time. So he has no idea how to react—and neither does Yuri. They’re _fucked_. 

The tall mugger grumbles something under his breath and takes another menacing step closer. _“Phones,”_ he repeats, angrier this time. “Don’t stand there flapping your lips, boys. We don’t have all night.”

The other mugger, hanging back at the lip of the alley, the _lookout_ , nods in agreement.

One of Yuri’s shaking hands slowly slips into his coat and tugs out his phone. Before he has a chance to hand it over, the man snatches it from him and throws it against the brick wall of the alley, shattering the screen. It lands in the snow in pieces. 

JJ inhales sharply, but Yuri can’t bring himself to look at the man.

The tall mugger shoots a dark glare at JJ, who chokes on air, then reveals his own phone. It suffers the same fate as Yuri’s, and JJ flinches when a piece of the glass screen rebounds against his jeans so hard it rips the fabric and pierces his skin, a shallow splinter.

The tall mugger, now wearing a smug expression, looks them over carefully. “You’d think boys your age would know better than to wander the city streets at night.” He shrugs, jokingly, like this is a game. “But I guess you’ll learn tonight, huh?”

He leans closer to the smaller of his two victims—the one who looks more vulnerable, Yuri begrudgingly admits. Him, of course. The _Russian_ _Fairy._

Taller and broader he may have grown over the past few years, but he still has that air of androgyny about him. The Viktor-esque long hair, down past his shoulders now, probably doesn’t help—but it’s an image, a _brand_ , and Lilia and Yakov still consider it important to maintain until Yuri can no longer pull it off. So here he stands—the chosen _damsel._

God, he’s never going to live this down. (If he even makes it out of this alive…)    

Yuri sees the glint of the knife as it draws closer to his face, until the blade is a hairsbreadth from his cheek. “Again, you first, boy. Empty the wallet. Cash first, then cards.” Another flash of malice ripples across his face. “No games. No delays. Let’s get this over with.”

Yuri doesn’t see where he has any choice but to obey. One slash with that knife, and it’s _over._

He realizes, belatedly, as he’s reaching into his pocket to retrieve the wallet, that he hasn’t breathed all that much in the past few minutes. His chest is tight, his throat closed up, his teeth clenched too hard to let air pass through. He’s starting to feel faint, head spinning, and he wonders idly if this is in any way similar to what happens to Yuuri Katsuki, during one of his anxiety attacks.

If so… _Fuck_ , he may have to apologize sometime, for belittling the Pork Cutlet’s condition.

Yuri tugs the wallet out and flips it open. He doesn’t have much cash on him—he rarely needs it anywhere these days, and ordering foreign cash in advance of a competition is always a hassle. 

The mugger notices the lack of bills and sneers. “Really, that all you got, brat?” 

Yuri swallows. His throat feels like it’s full of sand. He lightly nods.

Growling, the mugger snatches his wallet, deftly removes the few bills and two cards, and then tosses the leather aside, into the snow. The whole time, the knife doesn’t move—until the tall mugger’s angry eyes meet his own again. “You expect me to believe that’s all you have? Empty your pockets, kid.” 

“B-But…I don’t…I’m not…”

A cold blade touches his cheek.

Yuri’s words die on his lips.

“Empty. Your. Pockets.” No one could miss the _warning_ in that tone. _“Now.”_  

Yuri’s hands drop to his pants, and quickly turn his front pockets inside out. Then they move up to his coat pockets, and he can see the mugger is less than impressed when those, too, end up producing nothing. Yuri is about to reach for his back pockets, to prove he has no more cash on him—even if he _wants_ more, just to appease this man, this man who might very hurt him if he turns out to have “too little”—when it happens.

A snowplow turns the corner of the street and drops its heavy shovel on the icy asphalt. The sudden sound of churning snow, mixed with the growl of the engine, pulls the tall mugger’s attention away from his victims. The lookout mugger, too, is distracted, stumbling away from the alley. The knife dips an inch, and the stupidest idea Yuri’s ever had floods his brain. 

Funny thing is, JJ, who he _totally_ forgot about several minutes ago—has the exact same idea. 

JJ’s hand shifts from Yuri’s shoulder to his wrist, and the next thing Yuri knows, he’s being hauled away from the tall mugger. JJ literally drags him around, one-eighty, the blade of the knife _just_ nicking Yuri’s chin, enough to draw a slow but steady stream of blood.

Yuri’s legs start moving on their own, and then they’re running. Running very fast. Running away from two armed men who could very well kill them.

The tall mugger whips backs around and screams, “Hey!”

They don’t stop running. Down the alleyway they go, to the other end, which is blocked off by a fence. But the fence is only six feet high, and he and JJ are figure skaters. They can jump.

And they do. They fly off the ground, grasp the top of the fence at the same time, heave themselves over, and drop to the snowy concrete on the other side. 

As soon as they land, JJ’s hand finds Yuri’s wrist again, and Yuri doesn’t protest as the Canadian skater takes the lead on their flight from the muggers.

For ten minutes, maybe fifteen, they’re sprinting full speed through the Vancouver streets, and Yuri has no idea where they’re going. (He’s not sure JJ does either.) But as long as they get away from the men with the knives, Yuri honestly doesn’t care. They could end up in a homeless shelter, and that would be _fine_. As long as it’s safe. 

_Safe_ is all he needs right now. He can do warm and cozy and comfortable later, when his life’s not at risk. 

They finally stop running when they’re both about to keel over, gasping for air. They fall limply onto a stone bench, and as Yuri tips his head over the back, drawing frigid air into his lungs, he glances around, seeing they’ve ended up in some kind of business area. The tall buildings he was admiring from the market the other day loom over him now, casting that orange glow all around them, creating a haze in the snow.

Not far beyond where they’re sitting, the now icy waters of False Creek churn loudly in the night. 

JJ, bent in half, his forehead planted against his knees, wheezes out, “We should find a police station or something. Report this. That guy—he stole your credit cards, yeah?” 

“How do we find a police station?” Yuri rasps back, his throat raw from the cold. “We can’t look up any maps. We have no phones.”

JJ groans. “Forgot about that.” He rubs his face. “Okay, how about we find our way back to the hotel, and then…”

Yuri almost smacks himself. “You don’t remember how we _got_ here, do you?”

JJ shakes his head, sighing. “Don’t take that tone with me, Plisetsky. Honestly. You don’t remember either. I was pulling you along the whole damn time.”

“He had a knife in my face!” Yuri spits. “Sorry if it took me a minute to shake it off.”

That reminds him. He gently prods his chin, where the knife caught him. His fingers come away red, and he traces the waterfall of blood down his throat, into the collar of his jacket. It’s not _that_ much blood. He’s gotten worse injuries from falling in the rink. But the fact that this little cut came from a guy who may have _killed_ him if Yuri had fucked up…

Yuri stumbles up from the bench, staggers over to a nearby trashcan, and vomits. 

When he has nothing left to hawk up, he collapses to his knees and dry heaves, fingers grasping the rim of the trashcan so hard his knuckles turn white. For a few minutes, he basks in the silence, trying to collect himself, to realign all his limbs and organs that feel strangely out of place, to reboot his brain that clearly isn’t working properly. 

It’s not until his breathing finally slows to a reasonable rate that JJ touches him. “Hey,” JJ mumbles, his hand ghosting across Yuri’s back, “you okay? Can you stand? Can you—?”

“I don’t need your help, Leroy,” Yuri retorts. But it doesn’t have its usual bite. He’s too tired, too shaken, too _scared_ , to make it believable.

JJ pretends it is anyway. “Of course not, Plisetsky. You never need h-help with anything.” His voice wobbles on _help._ “But help or not, it’s cold, too cold, and we really need to get inside…anywhere, really. Maybe we can find an open store, borrow a phone, call the police, get this sorted out. Then get back to where we belong. We still have a Free Skate tomorrow, you know?” 

Yuri lifts himself with the aid of the trashcan, vision wavering on his way up. “Leroy, don’t think for a second I’ve forgotten our upcoming cage match. Which you _will_ lose. Badly.”

JJ faintly snorts and drops his hand. “That so?”

“Want to bet on it?” Yuri wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “After all, I got some money that needs replacing.” 

JJ’s almost-smile falls into a deep frown, and his gaze sinks to the cut on Yuri’s chin. “Hey…actually, if you really need that money back, I can spot you. It’s not a problem.”

Yuri rubs his now throbbing forehead. “No!” he yells, the sound echoing through the air. He cringes and lowers his voice. “No, Leroy. It was a fucking _joke_. I don’t want your money. Put your _skating_ where your cash is—that’s what I want to see. Tomorrow. Free Program. Make it count.”

JJ crosses his arms, closes his eyes, and bites his lip, like he’s thinking. Then he nods. “All right. Fair enough. If that’s how you want to play it. Now let’s head out. It’s too damn cold out here to keep arguing.”

“Didn’t you grow up _in_ Canada?”

The jab falls flat, but JJ replies anyway.

“Didn’t you grow up in _Russia_?”

“What’s your point?” Yuri mutters.

JJ eyes him. “You’re shaking like a leaf. And don’t tell me it’s not from the cold. Your ears and nose are bright red.” He holds up a finger before Yuri can reply. “And I know mine are too.”

“Okay, fine.” Yuri _very_ reluctantly admits JJ is right. They need to get out of the elements. “Which way should we go?”

JJ spins around in a circle, like he’s selecting at random, and then marches off toward a walkway that follows closely alongside the shore of False Creek. Yuri would criticize him for literally playing eeny meeny miny mo with their well-being, but then—Yuri has no fucking clue where to go either. So he swallows his complaints and follows JJ.

They strike a quick pace, power walking alongside the shoreline toward a big road Yuri thinks he remembers from his brief tour of the city. There must be some stores still open along that road, a club or bar at least, maybe a hotel they can duck into. Hell, if they’re really lucky, maybe there’s a police station right down the first block.

JJ checks over his shoulder, brows drawn together. “You all right there, Plisetsky?”

Yuri realizes he’s lagging behind.

_No,_ whispers an awful voice in his head, _you’re shutting down. Too cold. Too tired. Hurry up, or you might not make it back at all._

Yuri silently tells that voice to stuff it, and moves to catch up with JJ. As soon as they reach the road—it can’t be more than a five-minute walk now—they’ll be just…

Yuri hears the man before he sees him, but those sharp ears don’t matter in the end. Heavy, fast footsteps peel around a row of short evergreen trees to Yuri’s left, and by the time his brain recognizes the oncoming blur as the tall mugger, the man is so close it’s impossible to avoid him. In a fit of rage, the man rams into Yuri’s much smaller form. Yuri leaves the ground, soars over the edge of the embankment that separates land from water, and then drops like a rock. 

Yuri sees ice coming up to meet him. But it’s not _his_ ice. It’s thin ice. Weak ice. Dangerous ice.

He breaks through that ice, and plunges into the darkness beneath.


	6. One Night Ends

Yuri’s world is cold and dark for what seems like an eternity, but he knows that since he doesn’t drown, doesn’t inhale the frigid inlet water and starve himself of oxygen, that no more than a minute or two must pass in this hell.

Even so, for this short but _so long_ time, existence is a flurry of dancing shadows, stinging cold eating through his skin, into his bones, and the static din of water in his ears. And he’s so stunned, so disoriented by his fall, by the collision with the ice, by his death dive into this wintery water, it’s all he can do to flail his arms and legs in no particular direction, much less kick up toward a surface he can’t even see.

His thoughts scatter, and air bubbles from his lax lips, stuck half-open in a scream that never came to pass. _What do I…? What should I…?_ He can’t figure out what to do. Ideas slip through his mental fingers like grains of sand, and he brings his hands to his head, squeezing, trying to force something coherent out.

If he stays under the surface much longer, he’ll… 

A hand appears at the top right corner of his vision, just in view. Yuri jerks toward it, reaches out, praying it’s not an illusion, praying that _something_ will go right for him tonight, anything, praying that all the asshole gods he’s been flipping off his entire life don’t turn their backs on him for the thousandth time.

His half-numb fingers make contact with the helping hand.

A second hand appears and grabs his wrist, and then Yuri is roughly yanked upward, back through the thin, cracked ice, back into the freezing night, the sky still spitting snow, back into the world where a mugger just tried to murder him because he had the gall to run away, back into the world where… _holy shit._  

The world where Jean-Jacques Leroy just saved his life.

JJ hauls Yuri out of the water, back onto solid ground, and they collapse onto the walking path in a heap of tangled limbs. Yuri’s wet clothes soak JJ’s in seconds, but the older skater doesn’t appear to care. He carefully lifts Yuri off his chest and tilts him to the side, then pats his back, _hard._  

At first, Yuri doesn’t get the gesture, but then he spits up half-swallowed water out of nowhere—and realizes he must’ve been closer to drowning than he thought. As soon as the water clears his esophagus, he doubles over and coughs; thankfully, no water emerges from his _lungs_. If he’d inhaled any, he’d be spending the rest of his night in the hospital, pending an infection.

Once he’s done coughing, he breathes again, deep, full breaths, sucking in the winter air like it’s the most precious thing on earth. Belatedly, however, he realizes he’s shaking—badly. No, not shaking. _Shivering._ His dip in False Creek just upped his chances of ending the night with hypothermia, and he’s well on his way there already. Great. Fantastic. Just what he needs less than twelve hours before a figure skating competition.

Someone shakes him, and he suddenly remembers _JJ_ is holding him. That he’s in JJ’s arms.

He pulls back, and almost tips over. JJ steadies him and looks him in the eye.

 _Ah,_ Yuri understands, _he’s been talking to me, but I haven’t heard a word._

He tries to listen when JJ opens his mouth this time, and is surprised to hear so much _worry_ in his voice that the older man actually stumbles over his words. “Yuri, you have to tell me: Did you hit your head when you went down? Did you break anything? Are you bleeding anywhere? Come on. Say something. Do you need an ambulance?”

Yuri runs his tongue across his clacking teeth, tasting nasty inlet water and the remnants of his own vomit from earlier. Between his shivers, he rasps out, “I need a heater. That’s all. I need to get inside. Or I’m going to…” He wraps his arms around himself, but the cold runs too deep. He swears he can feel it in his organs. If he starts to get _sleepy_ , he’s really in for it.

JJ nods, too hard, too fast. “Right. _Right._ We’re almost to the corner of the block. There’s got to be a place we can duck into. I’ll find one. Should be no more than a few minutes.” He points over his shoulder, the direction they were heading before…before…

“Wait!” Yuri says. “What happened to the mugger?” 

JJ bites his lower lip—which Yuri notes is _blue_ —and casts his gaze over Yuri’s shoulder. Yuri cranes his neck to look back the way they came, and jerks in shock when he spies the _lookout_ mugger running down the walkway, trying to catch up to his much more menacing partner, who’s in the water, floating away, struggling to stay on the surface.

The tall mugger can’t swim. 

Yuri slowly turns back to JJ. “Did you…?”

JJ clears his throat. “I may have _accidentally_ bumped into him while I was trying to get you out of the water.”

“Oh?” Yuri hears the lookout mugger shout in panic, followed by the splashing of water. “I see. You accidentally ‘nudged’ him nearly three meters off the bank.”

JJ shrugs. “Seems like it.”

“Huh.” Yuri curls in on himself, trying to keep his thoughts straight as the cold slips deeper and deeper into his core. He fails—which he realizes the moment “Thanks, JJ” slips out of his mouth, and actually sounds sincere.

JJ’s whole face lights up. “Really?” 

Yuri purses his lips. “Can we discuss this later? I’m going stupid from having to stare at your ugly face for so long.”

There. That’s better.

JJ snorts, then lets a shiver of his own wrack his body. He swears in French. “Yeah, later. Good idea. Let’s go.” He rises, a little shaky, and offers Yuri his hand.

Yuri doesn’t want to take it, but his legs are trembling so hard he honestly doesn’t think he can stand on his own. So he accepts the helping hand for the second time tonight, and JJ pulls him up.

They move quickly down the walkway, toward the wide road whose name Yuri can’t recall, but he keeps trying think of it anyway—because it’s better than paying attention to the fact he’s leaning against JJ while the taller man guides him along. If JJ lets him go, Yuri knows he’ll fall. He’s too cold, too tired—and god, if he doesn’t get to lie down and rest in a nice, warm place very soon, he’ll never skate tomorrow.

(He’s not entirely sure he’ll be able to skate even if he _does_ make it to safety soon. But he won’t admit that in his head, much less out loud where anyone, especially JJ, could witness his weakness.)

They reach the road and take a sharp left.

By this time, all of Yuri’s weight is braced against JJ, his feet stumbling harder with each step. He’s shivering so much that he’s losing control of his limbs. He curses inwardly, the only coherent thoughts he can manage in any situation, and pretends he doesn’t notice that JJ, too, is suffering.

The other man is trying not to let it show, but Yuri _drenched_ JJ’s clothes after his rescue from the Creek, and he’s definitely feeling the cold. His jaw is clenched so hard to stop it from shaking that Yuri thinks he’s liable to chip a tooth before the night is out. Not that he cares or anything… _Bah._  

Yuri turns his attention to the street. Most of the stores are closed, but there are a couple places half a block or so down with their lights on. And one of them, Yuri thinks (if he reads the sign right), is…a hotel?

“Leroy, there’s a…”

“I see it.” JJ nods at the hotel and speeds up as much as he can without toppling over. 

As they close in on the building, the sign comes into focus, and Yuri reads that the place has—can you believe it?— _one_ vacancy. Hah. If he had _any_ doubt that fate was jerking him around tonight, here’s the sign to prove it.

He and JJ hobble up to the lobby door, and, somehow, without dropping Yuri like a heavy suitcase, JJ finagles the door open enough to slip them both through. They squelch and squeak their way across the faux-marble floor, toward a small front desk staffed by a single woman. Who doesn’t look particularly happy to see two men who appear to have taken a late-night swim. 

Judging by her scrunched nose, she thinks they’re drunk. A couple of dumb college kids, pulling stupid stunts.

But Yuri honestly couldn’t care less about her opinion of them. The lobby is warmer than outside, for sure—he feels an immediate sense of relief when the ice stops biting deeper into his body—but his clothes are still cold and wet. He needs to strip and dry off, or maybe warm himself up in the shower, _then_ dry off. Whatever he can mange with what little strength he has left.

JJ, for once, seems to care as little about another person’s opinion as Yuri. He yanks out his damp wallet—Yuri remembers _his_ wallet is gone, presumably for good—and slips out a credit card. “We’ll take your last vacancy. I don’t care what it is.”

The woman stares at them in disbelief. “Look, I don’t know—”

“I don’t care what is costs either,” JJ snaps, pushing his card across the counter. “We’ll be gone in the morning, before 9:00. Okay?”

The woman looks from Yuri to JJ and back again, glances down at the credit card, then raises an eyebrow. “Hm, well…” She clicks her tongue. “All right. But you know that guests are liable for any damage to their rooms, correct? We _will_ be checking before you leave.”

“Yeah, yeah.” JJ waves at her dismissively. “Got it.”

The woman taps away at her computer, then runs JJ’s card. It goes through.

Appearing somewhat satisfied, she hands the card back to him. “You’re in 202. Let me get the keys for you.” She disappears behind a frosted glass half-wall for a moment, and then reappears with two key cards.

Accepting them, JJ mutters a halting, “Thanks for your help.” 

Throughout this whole exchange, Yuri is trying his hardest not to fall out on the floor, clinging to JJ’s left arm. (Oh, he’s _never_ going to live this down.) Once JJ pockets all the cards again, he leads Yuri to the elevator. When the elevator doors close, cutting off the snooty lady’s line of sight, Yuri finally gives up any pretense of having strength left and collapses against JJ’s chest.

It’s JJ who tries to banter this time. “Aw, Plisetsky, I didn’t know you felt that way about me.”

Yuri pretends to take the bait, like JJ did last time. “Don’t flatter yourself, Leroy. I rank you exactly one step above wiping out on the floor. Actually, not even one. More like a half step.”

JJ chuckles dryly at Yuri’s comeback attempt and says nothing else.

The elevator lets them out on the second floor, and JJ has to practically drag Yuri two doors down the hallway. He hastily opens the door with the keycard, and they both spill into the room, JJ kicking the door shut behind them.

“Shit!” Yuri gasps out as he collides with the wall and slides down to the floor. He unzips his coat and peels it off, casting it carelessly aside. His shirt follows. Then his shoes, which he can’t untie with his shaking fingers—he slides them off instead and then punts them across the floor.

While he’s working on the button for his jeans—how the fuck do buttons work again?—he catches sight of JJ staggering over to the thermostat on the wall and cranking it up as high as it’ll go. Then he situates himself right underneath the vent in the ceiling, slowly sinking to the floor with a heavy sigh. His feet are already bare, and he starts working himself out of his own coat just as Yuri is trying to remember how you actually remove jeans. Because the mechanics seem strangely difficult when your fingers and toes aren’t working right.

“Okay,” Yuri mumbles, “that’s it. Bathroom’s mine.” He has to get his hands working again before he can do anything else. “If you need me for something, it can wait. I don’t care what it is. It waits until I’m not cold anymore.”

JJ closes his eyes and mutters something Yuri doesn’t think is English.

Yuri literally crawls to the bathroom, slams the door shut, and turns the shower on as hot as it’ll go. He doesn’t get _in_ the shower—instead, he sits on the floor, curled up in a ball, while the room steams up.

Gradually, over the course of ten or twenty minutes, all the feeling returns to his extremities, and when he feels strong enough to stand, for a few moments, at least, he finds that his skin is the usual color, plus a pink flush, instead of the almost icicle blue it _must_ have been when he first stumbled in here. Relieved, Yuri waddles over to the shower and turns the temperature down to a reasonable level.

Finally, he manages to take the rest of his clothes off—he hangs his underwear up to dry on the towel rack but lets the jeans sit in a pile on the floor—and steps under the spray. It’s _heavenly_ , is all he can think. He’s on his knees for most of the shower, too exhausted to stand, but he manages to wash himself anyway, clearing away all the debris and muck from his unplanned swim.

Briefly, Yuri wonders what became of the muggers. Did the tall one get out of the Creek, or…?

On second thought, who cares? Bastard deserved whatever he got. He tried to _kill_ Yuri after all. Who does that? What kind of fucked-up mugger literally chases someone down and tries to drown them? What a _nutcase_.

When Yuri can’t stand the stuffy air any longer, he cuts the shower off and clambers out of the tub. Grabbing the towel from the rack, he sits on the floor and slowly dries himself off. When that’s finished, he fishes around in the cabinet under the sink, finds a complimentary hair dryer, and uses it to dry not only his hair but also his underwear.

He works on the jeans a bit, too, but those will have to hang up over night—unless he wants to stay up another hour drying them with this tiny hair dryer.

Not happening. He needs sleep now. _Right_ now _._

God, he has a Free Program to skate before lunch. And he needs to be back at the hotel—the one he’s _supposed_ to be sleeping in tonight—before 8:30 in the morning, when Yakov and Lilia are supposed to come collect him. _Fuck_. Even if he only gets three to four hours of sleep, he’ll be cutting it close.

But any less than that, after what he’s been through tonight…

He _has_ to sleep.

So exhausted he can barely stand, Yuri slips his underwear back on, opens the bathroom door, and all but drags his own ass into the short hall again. When he turns the corner into the main room, he finds all of JJ’s clothing laid out in an orderly fashion, drying on the floor. JJ is not where he was before, against the wall, and Yuri blinks a few times, looking around, trying to find him. He’s so tired he can barely see straight…

Using the wall to support himself, he collects all his own clothing and drapes each article over a stiff chair in the corner. They _should_ dry out enough for a cab ride in the morning.

Then he turns around and searches for JJ again, because he has to be… _ah_. There he is. 

JJ’s in bed and fast asleep already. Like, deadweight asleep. Only the top part of his head is sticking out from underneath the comforter, and a soft snore resonates from the sheets. 

Yuri considers waking him up, just for the hell of it—because he’s traditionally hated JJ that damn much. But he can’t justify it this time. Not after JJ…well, saved his life.

He could have easily drowned back there.

 _Okay,_ he reluctantly thinks, _JJ’s not quite as bad as I’ve made him out to be. I admit it. There. I give in. He’s not totally horrible. He actually possesses…some redeeming qualities._

So, if he’s not going to mess with JJ, then he needs to go to sleep too… _oh_. And there’s the final problem of Yuri’s night.

There’s only one bed. It’s a single room. _Of course_ it is.

Suddenly, Yuri’s tired brain gets the funny idea that maybe an asshole god is _actually_ trying to force him and JJ to work out their differences and become “best buds.” Or some shit like that.

Yuri squashes that stupid idea before it takes root. This isn’t a god’s work. Nope. No way. This is just his crappy luck, playing out to its natural conclusion.

Yuri smacks himself in the face, and cringes, feeling the soreness of the cut on his chin. (Good thing he’s up to date with his tetanus shots.) 

He sighs into his palm, wondering what’s more important. His dignity. Or his back. (Because he could always just sleep on the floor, or in the really uncomfortable chair.)

He curses softly. The answer is his back, of course, because he can’t skate with back pain. Plus, if he loses to JJ tomorrow because of a crick in his neck, he’ll never live it down. He won’t have _any_ dignity left for the rest of his life.

Grumbling, he grabs the decorative pillow from the chair and drops it in the middle of the bed. The best “wall” he can build on short notice. Then, he shambles to the nightstand, checking to make sure there’s an alarm set on the clock. There is. JJ managed that much before he conked out. So Yuri clicks off the nightstand lamp, and the room falls dark.

Finally, he moves over to the empty side of the bed, yanks the sheets backs, and literally collapses face first onto the mattress. His forehead heads the bottom edge of the pillow, but he doesn’t care. He drapes the comforter over his shoulders, presses his nose against the flowery-smelling sheets, and, at last, lets his eyelids drop.

Yuri doesn’t wake again until hours later, until the alarm clock has been playing terrible music for eight minutes straight, until the sun is climbing toward the skyline of a snow-powdered Vancouver, and until, somewhere a short cab ride away, early risers are setting up an ice skating rink for one of the most important competitions of the year. 

And by then, it is, _unfortunately_ , too late.


	7. The Calm Before

Yuri wakes confused. There’s an unfamiliar alarm blaring in his ear, the wall he’s idly staring at is _not_ the one he remembers from the hotel room he’s checked into, his body feels like someone hit him with a _truck_ , and, best of all, an arm that doesn’t belong to him is casually draped over his waist. Oh, and someone is breathing softly against the back of his neck.

There’s a mumble from this person who should _not_ be in Yuri’s bed. A French mumble. 

Last night’s disaster plows its way through the murk in Yuri’s brain, and it _all_ comes rushing back.

_Oh. Fuck. No._

He nearly shrieks as he hauls himself out of bed, rips the pillow off the mattress, lifts said pillow over his head—and brings it down on JJ’s face as hard as he can. JJ snaps awake with a yelp, raises his hands to cover his face, and peeks through his fingers as the pillow assault continues.

“Yuri?” 

Smack!

“Plisetsky!”

Smack!

“Stop it!”

Smack!

“Why are you—?”

Smack!

“What did I—?”

Smack!

“For fuck’s sake!”

JJ’s right hand shoots out and grabs the pillow, ripping it out of Yuri’s grasp and tossing it into the corner. Yuri lets his hands fall to his sides, fists clenched, cheeks burning, jaw working to produce words through his overwhelming embarrassment.

Before JJ can get another word out, Yuri spits, “What the hell did you think you were doing? I put the chair pillow between us for a reason.” He points at the ugly chair pillow that _somebody_ kicked to the floor in the middle of the night.

JJ slowly sits up and peeks over the edge of the bed, his mouth forming in a little _O_ when he spots the pillow. “Ah, whoops. Forgot to mention I get a little cuddly at night.”

“Ugh! You’re just… _honestly_.” Yuri has the urge to smack himself. Or better yet, smack JJ. “Go ‘cuddle’ your girlfriend and leave me out of it.” 

JJ raises an eyebrow. “Wife, Yuri. Isabella’s my wife. We’ve been married for over two years.”

Yuri throws up his hands. “I don’t care. All I care about is that you never, ever tell anyone about this.” He points at himself, dressed only in his underwear, then at JJ, who’s equally underdressed, and then at the clothes spread across the room, still laying out to dry. “Any of this. Not the mugging. Not the _swim._ And definitely not the sleeping in the same bed part. If you tell anyone, so help me god…” 

JJ shakes his head. “Plisetsky, calm down. I’m not Phichit Chulanont. And even if I was, I don’t have a phone right now, remember? There won’t be any Instagram shots of me dragging your half-frozen butt through the streets last night. I _promise._ ”

“Hm.” Yuri is tempted to keep arguing with him, but JJ has a point about the phone. “And what are you going to tell people if they ask where you were last night? Someone must have noticed you were gone.”

JJ waves his hand. “Not this time. Isabella is in Quebec City, visiting her parents—her mom’s sick. And my parents stay in a different room than me.” He leans over to the nightstand and turns off the alarm clock. “No one should notice my absence until about 9:00. And we’ll be back by then. If we play this well enough, we _should_ be able to gloss over it. Although…”

Yuri crosses his arms. “What?”

“We still need to file a police report.” Yuri almost cuts in with a negative response, but JJ holds up a patient finger. “Look, I know you want to forget what happened—and I don’t blame you. But we can’t possibly be the only victims of those two muggers. We have to tell the police, Plisetsky.” He eyes the time on the clock. “We’ll be cutting it close, sure, but if we leave in the next fifteen minutes, we should be able to hit up the nearest police station, give them statements, and then _just_ squeak back into the hotel before 8:30. That works for you, right?”

Yuri considers giving JJ a straight-up no. But then he recalls that tall mugger ramming him into the water, the horror of flying through the air, crashing through the ice, nearly drowning, nearly _freezing_ , and a vengeful fire flares up in his gut. Yuri hates to admit it, but JJ’s right. They have to report those bastards to the cops, or the psychos might _really_ hurt somebody next time. Or worse.

Yuri hangs his head. “Fine. Sure. Whatever.” He backs over to the chair where he hung his clothes; they’re mostly dry, though his jeans are mildly damp along the seams. He gathers each piece and starts to get dressed. “Let’s get going.”

JJ, to Yuri’s surprise, says nothing in return.

They dress. They exit the room. They head back downstairs to the lobby, thankful to find it staffed by a nicer woman this morning. They check out, and JJ flashes his best eyebrow game and smooth grin to con himself a phone call from the main lobby phone, which he uses to order them _two_ cab rides.

Five minutes later, they’re inside their first taxi and heading toward the closest police station, only ten blocks away. 

The police are easier to deal with than Yuri expected—the station is almost deserted this morning—and they manage to file their report about the muggers in only twenty-odd minutes. Yuri lets JJ do most of the talking, since he’s a Canadian citizen and all, and Yuri only throws in his own points when asked by the woman taking their statements.

Before they leave, someone snaps a picture of the cut on Yuri’s chin, which is now starting to scab over, for the report.

After that, they thank the police and leave in good time, to find their second cab already waiting for them near the front steps of the station.

The second cab ride is as quiet as the first. Yuri gazes out one window at the snowy streets beyond, and JJ does the same on the opposite side of the car. Yuri watches the older skater’s reflection in his window, and notes that JJ looks strangely contemplative _._ There’s something heavy in his expression, much heavier than any skater needs on their mind in the hours before a major competition. This heaviness is exaggerated by JJ’s tired eyes, limp hair, the faint shadow on his cheeks and chin, the frown half-hidden behind the hand pressed against his mouth.

JJ’s thinking very hard about something. Yuri can make a few guesses as to what—the fear, the horror, the almost tragedy of last night—but he can’t bring himself to butt in on JJ’s private thoughts. Not because he cares that much about JJ’s feelings in general, but because he _owes_ JJ the silence. Just this once.

As they turn through the last intersection, and the hotel comes into view, Yuri wonders if he _should_ say something to JJ. He still doesn’t like JJ, by any measure, but the man saved his life last night, and Yuri’s short-tempered quips didn’t go very far in relaying his gratitude for not being left to drown or freeze to death on the sidewalk.

Unfortunately, despite racking his brain for several blocks, Yuri can’t quite put together a speech that adequately conveys his feelings. Mostly because he doesn’t really understand how he _feels_. Last night was…not his usual territory. His emotions are in disarray right now, and as the cab slows down to park in front of the hotel lobby doors, all Yuri can muster is a pile of gray, expressionless muck. He can’t even distinguish between happiness and anger. It’s such a goddamn mess.

The cab stops, and Yuri loses his opportunity.

JJ pays the cab fare, and they exit the car, heading through the fancy glass doors of the hotel lobby. They don’t speak as they wait for the elevator, or as they ride the elevator up to their respective floors. JJ is staying one floor below Yuri, so when the doors roll open the first time, Yuri receives a subdued nod, a “Take care, Plisetsky. See you at the Free Skate,” and the weakest smile he’s _ever_ seen from Jean-Jacques Leroy, including the one he gave his beloved fans after that godawful GPF Short Program back in 2016.

Yuri returns that smile with an equally weak one, missing the edge that usually turns his smiles into smirks.

The elevator doors close. JJ is gone.

(Something makes Yuri shudder at that thought.)

A minute later, he’s back on his own floor, sprinting down the hall to his room. The one thing the muggers _didn’t_ get from him was his room key, which he’d stuffed into his back pocket. He slips it out, opens the door to find the room exactly how he left it, stumbles inside, and shuts the door quietly behind himself.

At 8:28, Yuri sits on the bed, and then proceeds to stare blankly at the wall, wondering if he somehow, some way, just hallucinated the last ten hours. Because how could all of _that_ had happened last night, only for him to be sitting here now, like nothing happened at all?

Two minutes later, at 8:30 sharp, Lilia knocks on his door and tells him to get ready in under five minutes or he’ll be penalized with extra practice when they return to St. Petersburg.

Yuri strips off last night’s clothes, puts on fresh ones, brushes his teeth, washes his face, and then spends the last minutes before his deadline standing in front of the door with one hand on the knob. Afraid to turn it. Afraid to open it. Afraid what he sees on the other side won’t be _right_ , won’t be the life he had before last night, before he spent hours running through the streets with the least likely companion in the world.

Yuri is afraid that last night has somehow changed…everything.

But he won’t realize until later just how _valid_ that fear is. 

So he opens the door, and leaves the room, and doesn’t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up, y'all. The next chapter is where that "emotional devastation" begins. So prepare yourselves.


	8. The Storm

Yuri is on the ice when the news breaks.

He’s coming off a Quad Toe Loop and moving into his step sequence, his fast-paced classical music blaring over the speakers, his heart pumping hard in his chest, his muscles screaming at him for the strain, his mind strangely blank. A minute and a half is all he has left. A combo. A few more spins. That’s all he has left to do, and then he’ll win.

But the exhaustion is creeping up on him faster than it normally does, and he knows it’s because he was tired before he even tied his skates. Last night was _too_ much, between the running and the “swimming” and the near disaster that is hypothermia—his body is shot, and he had no illusions left about his performance after the warm-up session, during which he fumbled a triple axel. 

Yakov had nearly screamed at him for it, but Yuri had only sighed to himself and claimed it was a one-off mistake.

He’d nailed that axel a minute ago too; all he has to do now is make it to the end.

JJ hadn’t performed his best today, flubbing two quads, but he’d made up for it in the second half of his program and jumped back into first place, over the other competitors, who’d had their fair share of mistakes as well. Overall, it’s been a lackluster GPF, Yuri must admit, and his performance today won’t go down as one of his best either. But a gold medal is a gold medal, and he’s still determined to beat JJ.

Next year, maybe, he can hit that coveted “next level.”

Yuri comes off the step sequence, which was a bit less passionate than normal, his fatigue peeking through, but he skates fast and strong into the liftoff for his combo, nails the triple, then the double, then whirls around for a camel spin with hardly a breath in between. His pulse races, too fast, and his chest is starting to ache, but there are thirty seconds left in his program, and he’s not stopping now.

He emerges from the camel spin, not as graceful as he would like, and then transitions into the finishing moves of his routine. Easy. Two more spins, and a final pose. He can do this!

The music crescendos, Yuri hits the spins _just_ right, and then unfolds into the last pose, facing the judges with his arms up.

Done. It’s _done_.

His body feels like Jell-O, but he didn’t fall on his ass, or put a hand down anywhere—his performance _must_ have been better than everyone else’s. The gold is his.

So why isn’t the audience cheering as loudly as they normally do?

Yuri peels his gaze off the judges, comes back to the world after his four-and-a-half-minute trip inside his own head, driving his body into impossible positions like he was at the controls of a piece of construction equipment. (Not the metaphor he’d typically use to describe his skating—he has more finesse than that most days—but every step of today’s routine had been a chore.) 

He wonders, before he dares to cast his attention on the audience, if he made a mistake he didn’t notice. Did he wobble badly coming off that last Quad? Or maybe one of his spins looked not quite right? Did the announcers comment on a flub and embarrass him in front of the whole rink while he wasn’t listening?

What is it? 

Yuri slowly rolls his eyes toward Yakov and Lilia, who are standing just off the rink, near the Kiss & Cry, where they usually are. What’s _un_ usual is that they’re not looking at Yuri. Most of the time, when he comes off the ice, they give him a short critique. Tell him _Good job, but you could have done this or that better_ , then guide him to the bench for the Kiss & Cry to wait for his scores. 

Now, though, they’re not even paying attention to him—and Yuri honestly wonders if they were even watching the end of his performance. Because they’re both glued to Yakov’s phone, like whatever is on the screen is more important than their student who just skated his Free Program for the goddamn Grand Prix Final. What the hell? 

Yuri glances around at the crowd. _A lot_ of people are on their phones, actually, and he realizes whatever they’re looking at must account for the strangely lukewarm reception to his Free Skate. Yuri’s mouth suddenly feels dry, and he swallows, an odd sense of nervousness brewing in his gut. Has something happened? A natural disaster maybe? Or an unexpected death?

Did some big news break while he was skating?

A sense of urgency overtakes him, and he quickly skates toward the Kiss & Cry.

Lilia is the first one to drag her eyes from Yakov’s phone. Even through her makeup, Yuri can see her face is pale, and he hurries to slip on his skate guards and hop off the ice. The crappy replacement phone he bought on his way to the rink earlier is in his bag, which he left in the locker room, so he’s forced to shuffle over to Yakov, who’s standing rigid next to the Kiss & Cry, jaw set so hard Yuri is surprised he hasn’t broken a tooth.

Just as Yuri is about to lean over and snatch the phone from the old man, because now his heart is thudding hard for an entirely different reason, Lilia’s hand shoots and grabs his wrist. It’s not a hard grip—in fact, it’s trembling. And Lilia never trembles. Ever. You don’t get anywhere in ballet by _trembling_.

“Yuri,” Lilia whispers, her usually stern voice falling into worry and disbelief, her frown melting into a shocked _O_ , her eyes widening in horror. Yuri has never seen her display so much emotion, never seen her throw away her composure, not for a second. A chill skitters up Yuri’s spine as she says, “ _Oh_ , Yuri. What have you done?”

_What have I…done?_

That question doesn’t make any sense.

Yuri hasn’t done anything except skate. Yuri’s _never_ done anything except skate.

“I…huh?” Yuri responds intelligently, then that urge to see Yakov’s phone redoubles.

Yakov is still staring at the screen, eerily still. Yuri can’t get a read on him at all. 

On impulse, Yuri reaches out to rip the phone from Yakov’s grasp (with what little strength he has left, every muscle shaking)—only for a panicked voice to cry out nearby. The sound echoes across the now quiet rink. The too-quiet rink. The uncomfortably quiet rink.

Yuri pivots around to find JJ, who’s standing about fifteen meters away, is the source of the cry. He, too, is staring in shock at his phone, all the color slowly draining from his face. He slaps a hand over his mouth, muffling another cry, and then he begins to back away, toward one of the exit halls. A second later, he turns on his toes and rushes away from the rink, rapidly tapping on his phone screen.

His parents, both wearing looks of utter shock, do nothing to stop him.

_Holy shit…what’s going on?_

Yuri can’t take it anymore. He lunges forward, grabs Yakov’s phone, and tears it from the man’s grasp. Yakov doesn’t even reprimand him, only blinks at him in confusion, as if he didn’t realize Yuri was standing there until this exact moment.

Yuri brings the phone close to his face, eyes quickly scanning the screen. There’s a news story pulled up—although Yuri uses the term “news” lightly. It’s one of those nasty gossip rags that dedicates its every story to spreading nasty rumors about celebrities. This particular website focuses on athletes, and Yuri has spotted less-than-savory stories about himself on this site several times in the past.

He’s largely ignored these stories, because the vast majority of their claims are either grossly exaggerated— _Yuri Plisetsky assaults reporter,_ when, in fact, he simply pushed a microphone away from his face—or they’re just straight-up lies. Ninety-nine percent of the time, their stories have no accompanying videos or pictures or evidence of any kind (and more than one athlete, Yuri is sure, has successfully sued these people for libel).

But _this_ time…this time… 

Yuri can’t believe what he sees. He absolutely can’t believe it. And yet, there it is, plain as day.

A picture, taken from the window of one building and _through_ the window of another building across the street. A perfect shot, angled down to capture the faces of the two men in the room. The two men in the _one_ bed in the room. Two men who appear to be naked—even though they are not. Two men who appear to be intimate—even though they are not. Two men who appear to be having an _affair_ —even though they are _definitely_ not.

It’s him and JJ. From earlier this morning.

Some motherfucking, _piece of shit_ paparazzi took a picture of him and JJ in bed together and slapped it up on the internet, as part of an article titled:

**TOP FIGURE SKATERS INVOLVED IN ILLICIT ROMANCE?**

_Champion Skaters Jean-Jacques Leroy and Yuri Plisetsky Caught Together in Vancouver!_

Oh.

Oh, _no._


	9. The Eye

There’s more than one picture.

There are, in fact, fourteen, each published about half an hour apart, with a variation of the same scandalous article, over the course of the entire day, across every tabloid rag Yuri has ever heard of. Until, inevitably…one legitimate news site is tricked into picking up the “story.” And the rest follow the leader.

All the pictures were clearly taken in the same two or three-hour period, in the early hours of the morning, when JJ and Yuri were fast asleep after their too-eventful night. Each picture shows Yuri and JJ in bed together, seemingly nude, judging by their lack of shirts. Each picture was strategically taken to _avoid_ showing the damp clothes laid out on the furniture and floor. Each picture was also taken _after_ JJ kicked the chair pillow off the bed and snuggled up to Yuri because he’s, apparently, “cuddly” at night.

The photographer knew what he was doing. He knew there was no scandal there, not really, other than two figure skaters being out too late the night before a competition and getting into some “shenanigans” involving a dip in the Creek. So he took it upon himself to _manufacture_ one. Likely because he wanted a payday more than he cared for the well-being of his “subjects.” 

Yuri suspects, based on the accompanying “witness interview” in the “articles”—the contents of which Yuri cannot bear to repeat inside his head—that the lady at the front desk, the _bitch_ lady who didn’t want to give them a room, is the one who sold them out. She must’ve recognized JJ’s name on the credit card he used to book the room, and then decided to get back at them for barging in by earning a quick buck herself from a sleazy paparazzo in need of a “scoop.”

Not that the exact details behind the pictures or the articles _really_ matter at this point. The truth doesn’t matter—Yuri’s not naïve to think that everyone on the internet, everyone in the world, will simply change their opinions based on his and JJ’s counterclaims.

Fuck, JJ’s already tried.

Yuri saw JJ’s official statement about the mugging pop up in his news feed a few hours ago. Forty minutes later, the comments were filled with two thousand hateful diatribes about what a lying cheater JJ is, and how Isabella should drop him like a rock. Half of JJ’s loving fans, turning on him just like that. (Now, the _other_ half…) And all this, despite the fact JJ posted a copy of the police report.

But, you see, _that_ doesn’t matter. Because it doesn’t disprove the whole premise of the “scandal.” That Yuri and JJ were _together_ last night. What capacity they were together _in_ is irrelevant, because they have no proof about what happened after the mugging. The lady from the front desk won’t tell the truth. The photographer’s not going to either. And the police only saw them the following morning. Even the muggers themselves (if they’re alive and well) can only report what happened during their last attack.

The only ones who know the whole truth and are willing to _tell_ the whole truth…are the subjects of the scandal. And no one will _ever_ believe them.

Yuri’s replacement phone buzzes on the pillow next to his head, but he doesn’t pick it up this time. Instead, he stares blankly at the ceiling, like he’s been doing for the last hour. The lights are off. The TV is dark. The blinds are shut. And the door is locked. Yuri is alone, and there’s no condition he’d rather be in right now.

He can see the glint of his gold medal out of the corner of his eye, hanging from the knob of the dresser, another fantastic GPF win for him. But it’ll forever be painted by the podium ceremony that’ll haunt him for the rest of his life. _Booing_. For the first time in Yuri’s entire skating career, he was booed the entire time he stood on the podium. And it wasn’t for his bad attitude. Or a nasty comment he made about somebody. Or for anything Yakov and Lilia and the rest of them had always _feared_.

No, it was because of a lie.

JJ received the same treatment, of course, standing on the second step of the podium, clutching his silver medal with white knuckles, his eyes aimed vacantly at the ice. He’d run off with his parents the second the ceremony ended, and Yuri hadn’t seen him since.

Latest “reports” had him hopping into a cab with all his bags packed and driving off to an unknown location. Odds were, he’d switched to an earlier flight and taken off to go meet with his wife in Quebec, explain things in person. This had spun too far out of control on the internet to be managed over the phone.

So Yuri’s alone here, now. In Vancouver. In a hotel filled with other skaters and coaches and GPF staff, who all think he slept with a married man.

The phone buzzes yet again, and Yuri presses his cheek into the pillow, groaning. 

The one good thing about losing his phone last night is that this replacement doesn’t have the same number, so his usual contacts aren’t getting through to him right now. But, he logged into all his social media earlier, _before_ all this shit went done. So the phone is still blowing up with notifications.

That, and…he texted Otabek.

Tentative, Yuri turns the phone screen toward him and unlocks it. There’s still no response from Otabek, even though he’s texted four times. The time difference between Almaty and Vancouver is fourteen hours, which means its morning in Kazakhstan, and Otabek wakes early. He’s seen Yuri’s texts by now, he must’ve. And even if he ignored them, sent from a strange number, he couldn’t have missed the two emails. Or the messages Yuri sent across three different social media sites.

But he hasn’t responded yet.

 _Please, Beka,_ Yuri mouths into the pillow. _You have to believe me._  

Of course, Otabek doesn’t _have_ to do anything _._ He’s free to make up his own mind. The pictures and the fake stories…or Yuri’s promise that he’s not a cheater? Which is stronger?

Yuri wants to believe that Beka will trust his word, but with the weight of every angry voice on the internet bearing down on Beka’s judgment…will he? Even if Otabek _wants_ to believe him, will Otabek’s family push him into cutting off contact with Yuri? Will Otabek’s other friends? Will Otabek’s fellow skaters? How much pressure can Beka withstand before he gives into the doubts?

Yuri feels hot tears prickling in his eyes, and he turns into the pillow to suppress a sob. He can’t help it. 

Every second he watches the screen, waiting for Beka’s response, a dozen more notifications pop up. Sixty-two new angry comments on Instagram. A hundred and eighty mentions on Twitter. Thirty-nine new messages on Facebook. Yuri doesn’t click on any of them, but most of the notifications come with a preview, so he gets the idea…

_@yuri-plisetsky HOMEWRECKING WHORE!!!!!_

_HOW COULD YOU, YOU LITTLE SLUT??? @yuri-plisetsky_

And a thousand, thousand more… 

Someone, whose name and face Yuri hardly remembers, a much older skater who retired soon after Yuri started training with Yakov, had a conversation with a female skater that Yuri, hiding in the stands to avoid Yakov’s angry, happened to overhear. During that conversation, about what Yuri thinks may have been another cheating-type scandal, the man had said:

_The good scandals age like fine wine, you know? They taste better the older they get. They’re the ones that make the history books. It’s the bad ones that fall apart at the seams after a short time, that unravel like poorly spun fabric. That leave everyone with that bitter aftertaste. So I say, if you’re going to have a scandal, at least make it one that lasts._

Yuri wonders, lying in his dark hotel room alone, if this scandal will be a “good” one or a “bad” one.

Will this end his career entirely? Or will it simply be a nasty stain that haunts his shadow forever?

Honestly…Yuri isn’t sure which of those options would be better. And—

An alarm on his phone goes off.

It’s time to pack for the airport. Or it would be, if he hadn’t packed already.

He’d begged Yakov and Lilia to let him leave Vancouver early, but they’d said no. _Yuri, you still have obligations here,_ they’d argued with their still-pale, shocked faces. Too many years of tradition so ingrained they couldn’t even override it for _this._ So he’d taken it upon himself to reschedule his own flight—from the day after tomorrow to nine o’clock tonight. Before the banquet. Before the gala.

He _can’t_ stay here any longer than absolutely necessary, and he can’t interact with any other skaters between now and the time he leaves. And he certainly can’t skate in front of another audience in Vancouver again. _God,_ no. Not after the podium today.

He has to get out of here as soon as humanly possible. And he has to do it discreetly.

JJ’s great escape didn’t go so smoothly because he made it too public. Someone threw a beer bottle at his head while he was walking up to his cab and screamed, _You fucking cheater!_ That person, Yuri thinks, was tackled by a hotel security guard, but not before JJ, who dodged the bottle by less than five centimeters, got seriously spooked. His parents had hurried him into the cab after that, and it had sped away.

Yuri doubts JJ will be flashing “JJ Style” at anyone for quite a while. Certainly not on the ice. If JJ shows his face at Worlds, Yuri will seriously be surprised. 

And unless something major shifts in this “scandal” between now and then, Yuri won’t be there either.

He _wants_ to skate. God, he really does.

But he can’t skate to…to…

_FILTHY STUPID WHORE!!! @yuri-plisetsky_

_GO FUCKING DIE @yuri-plisetsky AND LEAVE JJ ALONE!!!_

_@yuri-plisetsky YOU WORTHLESS PIECE OF SHIT!!! JJ AND ISABELLA ARE PERFECT!!! STAY THE FUCK AWAY!!!_  

Not even Viktor could have skated to _that,_ Yuri thinks, hot tears rolling down his cheeks. “Stupid JJ,” he mutters. “Why’d you have to take a walk at the same time as me, huh? Five minutes later, and we could have avoided all this.”

And Yuri could have gotten his throat slit by a mugger, too—which, he thinks, may have been a better alternative. If _this_ does end up destroying his entire career, all of it, gone at nineteen, flushed down the fucking toilet, then _yeah,_ yeah, maybe it would have better if Mugger #1 had taken him out in the alley. Like he may very well have if JJ hadn’t been there to drag Yuri away from danger.

At least then, Yuri would have gotten a nice obituary.

If he dies tomorrow, every article will be speckled with speculation about his supposed affair with “King JJ.” Same thing if he dies next month, or next year, or, hell, probably a decade from now.

These sorts of things don’t just…go away. Not in the age of the internet.

A second alarm rings on his phone.

Time to head to the airport. 

Yuri forces himself up, swallowing the rest of his tears as he wipes his puffy eyes. He has a plan he needs to follow here. A delicate plan. One that involves sneaking out of the hotel’s loading bay instead of going out the front door, because there are reporters _everywhere_ in the lobby, ready and waiting to mob him. They’d almost trampled him on his way inside when he returned after the podium ceremony earlier. 

Yuri stuffs his phone, still buzzing with new notifications every two minutes, in his jacket pocket, and rolls himself off the bed. His aching legs hold him, barely, tired from the skating and the running _and_ the swimming. His arms are a bit better, so he collects all his things while bending his knees as little as possible. Two bags. One suitcase. That’s it. The only impact his presence has had on Vancouver beyond a gold medal, now stuffed angrily in his suitcase, and a _juicy_ story currently spiraling out of control all over the world. A wildfire.

Yuri checks the room for anything he’s forgotten, not that he cares all that damn much if he loses a hair tie or a sock, but he finds nothing. Everything in the room is already off, and he snuck his room keys into Yakov’s pocket when they came back to the hotel earlier. So he doesn’t have to stop at the front desk. He’s ready. As ready as he’ll ever be.

*** 

He almost makes it without resistance. _Almost_.

Twenty steps to the elevator. Down past the lobby, sneaking by the press, who are so loud he actually _hears_ them when the elevator car passes the ground floor. To the level for the parking garage, which also branches off into a service hallway that leads to the loading dock. The door _says_ employees only, but it actually isn’t locked—bad security for the hotel, good luck for Yuri—so he slips through the hall unhindered.

There aren’t any trucks in the loading bay right now, and there don’t appear to be any workers on duty when he peers out the half-opened exit door. So he opens the door just enough to pass through—this door, he notices, only locks from the _outside_ , hah!—and extricates himself from the confines of the hotel.

Pulling his nondescript black hood over his head as far as it’ll go, he hurries along the loading bay, down the concrete steps, and starts across the cracked asphalt to a nearby alley that’ll let him onto the street where his ordered cab should be arriving in a couple minutes. 

It’s _here_ that Yuri makes his mistake—he sees the alley and hesitates.

Because an alley is where he got mugged last night. And even through it’s not as dark, and he can clearly see no one is waiting to jump out of the shadows at him, and there are _plenty_ people still passing on the street beyond the alley at this time—so he won’t be alone—he falters. The memory of the knife nicking his chin makes his scabbed cut throb, and his breath hitches, and he shuffles to a stop at the lip of the alley.

Just long enough for a flash to go off.

He wheels to the left. And there’s a photographer peeking around the corner of the building, with a long-range zoom lens attached to his camera.

“Yuri Plisetsky!” he calls out as he lowers the camera, a sleazy smile plastered across his face. “Can I get a quick statement about your relationship with—?”

Yuri doesn’t know what possesses him to do it. Maybe it’s because a part of him thinks this bastard might be the same guy who spied on him and JJ earlier. Maybe it’s because his deep-rooted loathing of the paparazzi has reached an all-time high. Or maybe it’s just his frustration at this whole fucking “scandal” finally boiling over. But whatever it is…

In a flash, he bends down, picks up a heavy, loose piece of asphalt, and chucks it as hard as he can at the guy’s camera. The asphalt soars through the air, collides with the camera, and smashes the lens with a nasty _crunch._ The reporter recoils, then gawps at Yuri in disbelief.

But Yuri doesn’t back down. The fire is lit. “My only statement is _Go fuck yourself._ ” He spits in the direction of the crushed lens pieces littering the ground. “You can send the bill to Russia, motherfucker.”

And with that, he turns on his toes, storms through the alley, finds his cab waiting on the other side, gets in, and rides all the way to the airport undeterred.

He shuts off his phone a moment before he goes through security, when a new article pops up entitled:

**FURIOUS YURI PLISETSKY SMASHES REPORTER’S CAMERA!**

_The Skater Reacts Violently to Questions Concerning his Affair with Jean-Jacques Leroy!_

Yuri boards his flight to St. Petersburg and doesn’t look back.


	10. The Aftermath

After Yuri returns to St. Petersburg, he lies on his couch, petting his cat and staring blankly at the ceiling for most of the afternoon. His phone sits on the coffee table between the couch and a TV with a blank screen that reflects Yuri’s listless posture like a shadowy mirror. Yuri glances at his phone every minute, on the minute, for roughly five hours straight.

Beka doesn’t call.

Yuri isn’t stupid, so when his stomach finally starts growling around dinnertime, he hauls himself up, plods over to his tiny kitchen, and scrounges up something from his freezer he can cook in the microwave. He refills the cat’s bowls while he’s waiting, then grabs his five-star dinner, some kind of Chinese knockoff meal, a water, and settles back on his couch. In an upright position this time.

By habit, he reaches for the remote on the edge of the coffee table, but when his fingers brush it, he hesitates. The last channel he was watching before he left for the Grand Prix Final, he knows, was a _sports_ channel. Even if the “affair scandal” isn’t the top story of the day, it’ll be on there somewhere. On the crawl at the bottom, maybe. His name. JJ’s name. An embarrassing headline.

He curses under his breath and retracts his hand. He eats in silence.

After he finishes eating, roughly half an hour later, he tosses his trash and cleans his utensils, and, yes, sits on the couch again. His cat joins him, and they spend another few hours in quiet contemplation—that is, Yuri basks in self-pity while his cat sleeps soundly—until night has firmly set in, the sky black outside his window.

He changes into his sleep clothes, brushes his teeth, washes his face, and flops down on his bed.

An hour or so of restlessness passes, Yuri fidgeting, tossing and turning, something scratching at the back of his head. Something he’s forgotten. It hits him at 1:32, according to the clock on his desk: he left his phone on the coffee table. 

Peeling off the sheets, he rises, shuffles back into his living room, and snatches the phone off the table. The screen is black, and the notification light isn’t blinking. He turned off notifications for all but his text messages and calls before he stepped off the plane—because he can’t stand any more goddamn social media updates—so the phone is telling him that no one has messaged or phoned him tonight.

Yakov and Lilia, Mila and Georgi, the others…it’s to be expected that they won’t contact him. At least not yet. Even though they annoy the shit out of him sometimes, they know when to back off, when they should give him space, when his “breathing room” matters. They’ll only poke and prod him when his self-imposed exile goes on for too long.

Yakov will likely be the first to break, Yuri thinks, if he has to bet on someone. But only because Yuri’s well-being is, ultimately, Yakov’s responsibility. The rest of them are—he sighs— _yes_ , his “friends,” but their stakes will always be a few points lower than Yakov Feltsman’s. That’s what it means to be a coach, after all, especially when your skater has basically grown up at your side. Almost like…

Yuri shakes the thought away. He needs a few hours of sleep, at least, if he’s to function tomorrow. Because, he promised himself when he first stormed back into his apartment, avoiding the press who were already waiting…tomorrow…Tomorrow Yuri will try to figure out a solution to this ridiculous problem.

He turns on his heels and goes back to his bedroom, sinking down onto his bed with a groan. He slaps his phone on the bed next to his pillow, and yanks the sheets over his head.

Beka doesn’t call him during the night either.

*** 

Yuri doesn’t know what possesses him to do it—the boredom must be fucking with his head. But at lunchtime the next day, while he’s poking at a bowl of borscht with his spoon at the kitchen table, he impulsively turns on all his social media notifications again. _For five minutes_ , he tells himself, as if he’s trying to convince his brain that walking through a minefield is a good idea. _Just to see if there have been any major changes since I got back._

And, _oh,_ there have been some changes. Not for the better.

Two dozen articles vilifying Yuri for skipping the exhibition skate and the banquet, calling him, at best, irresponsible, and at worst…Yuri isn’t sure how you can insult someone so much without using the word _fuck_ , but these journalists manage to do it. With every word he reads, he spirals further and further into something that someone dramatic might call _despair._ But Yuri’s not Viktor Fucking Nikiforov, so he’s not going to sink that far into melodrama.

He’s _not._ Absolutely not.

Yuri wipes at his eyes, pretending he doesn’t feel the stinting tears threatening to spill over, and shoves a spoonful of borscht into his mouth, even though everything tastes like chalk and sand to him right now. After he swallows, with great difficulty, he skims the last third of the current article he’s on, takes a deep breath, and hits the back key to return to his list of updates.

Every time he does this, there are at least two more articles…not to mention hundreds of social media mentions. Yuri can’t bring himself to look at those for more than half a second. They _do_ use a lot of _fucks_. And still too many _whores_ and _sluts_ for even the admittedly foul-mouthed Yuri to be comfortable with. Even if the onslaught wasn’t aimed at him, he’d be unnerved right now.

He knows he should shut the notifications off again, put his phone back on the coffee table, and find something to occupy his time. But Yuri’s never had much in the way of free time, much less a hobby. He skates. That’s it. That’s been his whole life, since he was practically a toddler, still wobbling around the rink.

Maybe he should go to the rink and practice. Maybe it’ll take his mind off… _Oh, no._ He remembers the reporters hanging around on the sidewalk near his building. If he goes outside, he’ll be accosted by them for several blocks, if not all the way to the rink. And he’s not ready for that right now. The wounds are too raw. He might snap again and break another camera, and unlike the photographer in Vancouver, the next journalist or reporter might not let him off with a nasty article and no other complaints.

Damaging someone’s personal property is a crime, after all. And the last thing Yuri needs is to get arrested, on top of his supposed “affair” with Jean-Jacques Leroy. If his career isn’t dead on the ice yet, it’ll certainly suffocate under the weight of a stint in jail.

Yuri gives up on the borscht, dropping his spoon on the table, and pushes his chair back.

This is too much.

What’s he supposed to do to fix all this? A statement like JJ’s will go over the same way: people will see it as a lie, him trying to deflect responsibility for his role in a “cheating scandal” onto what everyone considers an “unrelated incident.” The mugging.

But if he continues to say nothing at all, the story will keep winding up and up and up, beating his and JJ’s reputations into the ground until there’s nothing left but a puddle of watery mush and a sign that says _Caution. Wet floor._

Idly, he wonders what JJ is doing right now. Surely the man has seen his wife and had a conversation with her, unlike Yuri, who’s still waiting, less and less patiently, for Otabek to respond to his earlier messages. He _so_ wants to call Beka again, or message him at least, but he’s tried too many times already…Beka might just need a _bit_ more time to work out things on his end.

(Hey, Yuri can hope…right?)

Against his better judgment, Yuri does a search for JJ to see what the internet has to say about everyone’s (formerly) favorite Canadian Skater. As with Yuri, there’s a lot of shit to wade through—articles ripping JJ to pieces, demanding he quit skating for good, calling him all sorts of nasty names, etc.—but on top of that, it seems like more and more of JJ’s beloved fangirls are pulling away from him. Fewer are targeting Yuri than they were immediately after the story broke, and more are coming around to blame who they _think_ is the “cheater,” rather than the “home wrecker.”

A part of Yuri _wants_ to feel good about this—less heat on him—but another part feels, incredibly, sympathy for Jean-Jacques Leroy. His fans have been so loyal over the years, (and not nearly as immature as Yuri’s slightly younger fanbase, who tend to be melodramatic to a fault, stalking him and trying to force him into group selfies wearing cat ears). But now…they’re dropping JJ like a rock…even though he’s done nothing wrong. 

Yuri sighs and rubs his face, scrolling through a second page of updates about JJ. Just as he’s about to exit the browser altogether and shut off his notifications again—he’s suddenly, inexplicably, _tired_ —he spots an article from what he thinks is a reputable magazine.

**JEAN-JACQUES LEROY LIVING IN HOTEL IN THE WAKE OF AFFAIR SCANDAL?**

_The Figure Skater was Spotted Checking into a Hotel in Quebec City Late Yesterday_

A knot tightens in Yuri’s stomach, and a wave of nausea washes over him.

Did…Did JJ’s wife kick him out? She wouldn’t have done that, right? Surely, JJ was able to convince her of the truth, about the mugging, and all the ridiculous, unfortunate shit that followed.

Right…?

Yuri clicks on the article with trepidation.

The first thing that pops up is a picture of JJ walking toward the front entrance of a nice hotel. Now, JJ had looked _tired_ the day of the Free Skate, as tired as Yuri felt, both of them struggling for energy after their night “on the town.” But in this picture, JJ looks _exhausted._ There are dark bags under his eyes, his clothing is rumpled, and his hair is flat. He’s carrying two suitcases, along with a duffle bag, his back hunched from the weight…that’s a lot of stuff for a short stay.

Yuri bites his lip so hard it hurts. _She kicked him out,_ he knows without a doubt. _His wife kicked him out._

Yuri slams his phone on the table. The screen cracks. Not that he gives a shit. It’s a cheap replacement phone, and he’ll need to buy another later anyway.

He stands up, stalks over to the couch, and drops down, leaving his phone on the table without looking back.

He turns on the TV, averts his eyes until he can change the channel, and spends the rest of the day watching children’s cartoons, his mind carefully blank.

When the sky is black again, he shuts the TV off, showers quickly, dresses, and, finally, drums up the courage to retrieve the phone from the table.

But just as he reaches over to snatch it, the screen lights up.

With a text message from Otabek.

Yuri grabs the phone and holds it close to his face, the bright screen hurting his eyes in the darkness of his apartment at night, lights off. Yuri unlocks the screen with trembling fingers, and then hits the notification for Otabek’s message, so he can read the whole thing at once.

Only to find he really didn’t need to unlock the phone at all.

Beka’s message is only three short lines: 

_I need a break. To think. Until then, let’s not talk._

***

Yuri buys a plane ticket to Italy.

Yuri gives his cat to his neighbor for safekeeping.

Yuri packs one bag, with clothes and toiletries and his laptop and not a single figure skating costume.

(Yuri doesn’t pack his medals either. Or his skates.)

Yuri marches out of his apartment, sneaks through the parking garage exit, barely avoiding the press still camping out on his street, and takes a taxi to the airport.

Yuri leaves Russia at 11:45 PM—and he doesn’t know if he’ll ever come back.

**Author's Note:**

> The Tumblr fandom got me into YOI. The Tumblr fandom spurred me into writing a YOI fic. And now the Tumblr fandom will suffer the wrath of my unending angst.
> 
> AKA, Buck up, naughty children. It's emotional devastation time.
> 
> Also, just FYI: I'm not looking for critiques or any other writing advice. Please spend your time critiquing the writers who ask for it. I don't write fics for quality. I write for fun.


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